[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in question. As data from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be difficult to achieve, this might not be too surprising. Regardless if there are 2 or three approved casinos is the item at issue, perhaps not in reality the most earth-shattering slice of data that we don’t have.

What will be accurate, as it is of the majority of the old Russian nations, and definitely accurate of those in Asia, is that there will be many more illegal and alternative casinos. The switch to legalized betting didn’t drive all the former gambling dens to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the contention regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at most: how many legal ones is the item we are trying to resolve here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slots and 11 table games, separated amongst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more surprising to determine that both are at the same location. This seems most confounding, so we can likely conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, is limited to 2 members, one of them having changed their name just a while ago.

The state, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid conversion to capitalism. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the lawless conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are almost certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see dollars being gambled as a form of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century America.